Revamped Yahoo Sports Shows Company is Stuck in Silos

Just in time for the big game, Yahoo has revealed a big and beautiful redesign for Yahoo Sports. It features bigger photos, more video content and a look and feel that's similar to the one used for the new Yahoo TV and Yahoo Food. The individual sports pages also include content powered by Yahoo Answers.

Now compare these three sites with the first Brand Universe site  dedicated to all things Nintendo Wii. The design may look similar, but there's a lot more content from sites where consumers publish. Specifically, it includes links to blogs, Flickr photos and also Yahoo Answers. Time reports Yahoo is consolidating its interfaces as it reorganizes.

Yahoo seems to be faced with a disease that a lot of big companies have. They're launching sites that are drastically inconsistent. For example, some embrace RSS, many others don't. To me this is a sign of a company that's stuck in silos. They need someone like a Marissa Mayer type looking over the entire portfolio for synergies, overlaps and inconsistencies.

Tags: Yahoo, YahooSports

Comments

[Ravi]

Yahoo is starting to look more and more like a big-media company. Simple, clean and consistent layouts use to be their forte, now they are going for flash and glamour. Perhaps they are finally giving up the fight with google for that "purist-technophile" audience and trying to capture the "I read the USA today" audience?

[Kris Karkoski]

I have to think they are at least moving in a generally good direction. At least some sites have RSS. It sure beats none. But you hit the nail on the head, consistency is what could make Yahoo! a one stop shot for all content not just a place for sports, or email, or this, or that. Making it consistent (e.g. Google) could give it a good jump. Google is all around solid and consistent in not only design but content and essentially the whole package.

I think Yahoo's! big mistake is that, for example, their nintendo page contains no new content. I for one might visit it occasionally but I would rath cut through the BS and bookmark the sites they link to instead of Yahoo's! page. I am definately going to follow Yahoo! as their competition heats up and they are forced to adapt to the web 2.0 scheme.

[Don Crowley]

There are alot of issues about the way Yahoo is using customer contant. The flickr crowd are unhappy about it. See Wired Yahoo Wii Portal Gets Pwned and the whole discussion (Flickr forums) about using photos from Flickr where "all rights are reserved". One issue is that photos of children are appearing without consent. The Flickr API should only be serving content with a creative commons license. In the case of the wii portal, Flickr did revert to photos with a creative commons license but they should do that in all cases. So Yahoo's use of customer created content in their advertising sites is not going smoothly yet.

[Mike Abundo]

Mmm... peanut butter...

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